Amount of revenue from partnership between Capital Community College and the Artists Collective uncertain

The Artists Collective's Youth Jazz Orchestra rehearses in front of the Artists' Collective building on Albany Avenue in Hartford in this 2017 file photo. A deal with Capital Community College may allow the arts group to continue operating, despite financial woes. (Courant File photo)

New details have emerged about a potential partnership between Artists Collective and Capital Community College that appear to be less definitive than initial reports.

Although the collective has said it could receive $250,000 from the deal, the actual amount is unclear and could be less after the two groups split tuition revenue from non-credit classes taught at the arts organization’s Albany Avenue building.

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The future of the Artists Collective has been in jeopardy since the organization said it was in dire financial health earlier this year after years of deficits and eroding financial support from donors.

The new agreement, approvedWednesday night by the Artists Collective board, would allow an annual payment by Capital to the collective of up to $250,000 — though Capital leaders say they aren’t sure how much revenue the program will yield. The tuition revenue that “Capital at The Artists Collective” brings in would be shared by the partners, with Capital managing the revenue and paying the Artists Collective its portion.

There is no rental agreement between the two groups.

The one-year agreement would allow Capital Community College non-credit faculty to use space at the collective and to collaborate with collective artists to provide non-credit classes and programs for students and the community.

The revenues for the artists collective will be “based on programming revenues that are split between the artist collective and the college,” Duncan Harris, interim campus chief executive officer for Capital Community College said Wednesday afternoon.

“We have a strong reputation with continuing education and they have a strong reputation with the arts,” said Harris, “So that’s the partnership.”

He added: “One of the things we talk about is Capital’s role in supporting the Hartford community and that’s why when this opportunity came up we said, all right, that’s also a part of our mission.”

Benjamin Foster, board chairman for the collective, said he hopes the collaboration will provide the collective with a desperately needed new revenue stream “to get over the fiscal challenges that we are facing.”

The board also established a strategic partnership committee to help implement the goals of the new satellite campus.

“Everybody believes it’s a win-win,” Foster said after the board meeting. “… We are looking forward to entering into the agreement and hope further along the road to have a full operation here where we’re offering not only non-credit but credit courses.”

The state’s community colleges are also financially troubled and the new partnership would potentially offer a new revenue stream for Capital.

Harris said the hope is to have a contract in early January with classes beginning in March.

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For more than a decade, the Artists Collective has run six-figure deficits nearly every year. The organization has drawn on its endowment and cash reserves to plug holes in the budget, but that money is drying up.

In 2016, the collective ended the fiscal year with a $227,906 shortfall. There has been no public accounting of the group’s spending since then. An audit — disclosed to The Courant by the organization — noted that $217,628 remained in the endowment and cash reserves at the end of the 2016-17 fiscal year.

The group’s leaders say the collective never had a traditional endowment with millions of dollars stashed away. Instead, it had a small fund that, at its peak in the early 2000s, held about $500,000 for program use. Today, there is about $200,000 of that left, and no cash reserve.

Assets have also plummeted, to $4.8 million from about $8 million in 2000.

Almost all of that is tied up in the collective’s aging, 40,000-square-foot building. Dollie McLean, the organization’s CEO, said she has had to pay for repairs and upkeep out of the general fund, a ceaseless drain on the budget. When the building opened in 1999, the 15-year, $8 million construction capital campaign failed to raise enough for a $1 million maintenance endowment.

The group’s programs also have run in deficit. Financial disclosures and an outside firm’s analysis of the collective’s business model showed some programs running tens of thousands of dollars in the red. One was hundreds of thousands of dollars in deficit.

Since reports of the organization’s troubles surfaced last summer, enrollment in its programs declined, two longtime funders pulled out and its only grants writer quit, McLean said recently. Leaders say they need money to fill several high-ranking jobs, including CEO, fundraiser, turnaround specialist and public relations chief. McLean plans to retire soon.

But the collective has gotten a boost from private donations, hauling in $41,000 since August, with individual contributions ranging from $5 to $25,000.

Linda Guzzo, dean of the School of Workforce and Continuing Education at Capital Community College, said the first roll-out of the program will include non-credit and enrichment programs, as well as workplace training programs. Later, she hopes to offer credit-bearing classes,

“Currently we don’t have a lot that we do with regards to the arts,” Guzzo said. “This is going to be an expansion of our continuing education operation.”

“There’s going to be special interest classes. There will be events. There will be lectures tied with trips to performances,” she said.